The story of Bitcoin has actually had its justifiable share of nefarious characters, prison exercise, unhealthy haircuts and worse wardrobes, and but our anti-hero du jour has appeared to outdo all of them. Sam Bankman-Fried, higher recognized by the three letter acronym SBF, burst onto the scene on the peak of the 2017 bubble, founding Alameda Analysis that September, simply 4 years after graduating from an internship right into a full-time place at one of many world’s largest market makers, Jane Avenue Capital.
SBF is the son of Stanford Legislation professor and founding father of left-wing tremendous PAC Thoughts The Hole, Barbara Fried, and Stanford professor Joseph Bankman, an professional on tax shelter legal guidelines and authorities regulation. Firstly of 2018, SBF had struck digital gold whereas benefiting from the arbitrage alternative presenting itself between a better demand for bitcoin within the Asian market, colloquially often called the “kimchi premium”. By the tip of the 12 months, and after amassing a substantial fortune from this high-volume bitcoin/greenback unfold, he formally moved to Hong Kong, formally founding the derivatives change FTX within the following spring.
The Bitcoin community that SBF rode from rags to riches and again once more was partially launched in direct response to the fiat cash experiment rearing its ugly head within the subprime mortgage, actual property and eurodollar crises that culminated into what’s now often called the Nice Monetary Disaster of 2007 to 2009.
“??EThe Occasions 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks%”
– Satoshi Nakamoto, January 3, 2009
This now notorious inscription within the genesis block made clear the inappropriate fractional reserve banking and predatory mortgage fiascos of our regulated banking business was to be put to relaxation as soon as and for all by this emergent financial protocol; a totally clear and decentralized ledger would de-incentivize fraud and forestall obfuscation of illicit exercise. A brand new competitor to the greenback arose from the ashes of the meltdown, and with it, a brand new commonplace for monetary equity, full with predictable issuance, managed as soon as and for all by the individuals for the individuals. But in any system made with good intentions, criminals like SBF and his bought-and-paid-for political and media allies handle to discover a option to damage harmless individuals for the benefit of an unknown few. Like most intriguing tales of fraudulent monetary crimes, this one begins within the Bahamas, and ends with a tidal wave of asset liquidations and damaged houses.
“In the event you assume the Bahamas has ruined your world tax system, you could have a reasonably horrible world tax system.”
– Steven Dean, Summer season 2020 [1]
Launching The Stablecoin, CBDC Race To The Backside
The Bahamas appears innocuous sufficient, and but there’s a lengthy historical past of U.S. tax avoidance, full with rum-running bootleggers throughout the prohibition period. Persevering with this custom, the Caribbean banking facilities, together with the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands, as of August 2022, have been the fourth-largest international holders of treasury securities, behind solely Japan, China and the U.Okay. Shortly after the time of its founding, FTX was totally benefiting from the free cash period that started with the 2008 crash and was sustained by low-to-zero rates of interest introduced upon by the Trump administration.
These price cuts have been began by the Trump-nominated and Biden-renominated Jerome Powell and have been additional exacerbated by each of their administrations’ COVID responses. An unprecedented pumping of all issues greenback denominated occurred, with actual property, inventory indexes, bitcoin and an entire bunch of unregistered securities often called altcoins reaching new highs throughout the board. In June 2019, one month after the founding of FTX, Fb’s Mark Zuckerberg introduced Libra, a digital foreign money primarily based on a basket of worldwide currencies; a novel tackle stablecoins. This launched the stablecoin and CBDC race in earnest, and coincidentally sufficient, the Central Financial institution of the Bahamas turned the primary such establishment to announce its personal CBDC, the sand greenback, in October 2020. The sand greenback itself was pegged to the Bahamian greenback, which is itself pegged to america greenback, and thus with its government-sanctioned launch, the start of the primary central bank-issued stablecoin greenback got here to be on the sandy seashores of SBF’s new residence.
“What’s the reserve foreign money of the crypto economic system going to be? Proper now it is unambiguously the USD. And apparently it is USD whether or not or not you are trying on the American crypto economic system.”
– Sam Bankman-Fried, November 5, 2021
Whereas the U.S. authorities feigned worry of systemic danger on the time, the Chinese language authorities understood the Libra undertaking to be a backdoor dollarization of the G7 currencies rumored to be included in its basket. A Metaverse-held tackle the 1985 Plaza Accord, this plan of coordinated central banking would unfold USD community customers throughout the web’s largest community, sped up by the excessive velocity accessible in centralized digital funds and globalized by the borderless nature of the Fb consumer base.
The digital yuan was trialed in April 2021 with nice haste in response to this growth, and by the Winter Olympics 2022, had launched for international attendees in Beijing. To not be outdone by these new-look, same-shit fiat cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin made its personal monetary historical past when President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador took to the stage at Bitcoin 2021 to announce the authorized tender aspirations of his small however dollarized nation. On March 9, 2022 President Joe Biden signed Govt Order #14067–”Guaranteeing Accountable Improvement of Digital Belongings”, which included aspirations for mitigation of economic dangers in digital asset markets, in addition to a clause stating that inside 210 days, the lawyer normal, in session with the secretary of the treasury and the chairman of the Federal Reserve, should present a proper proposal for a government-issued CBDC.
By this level, the Bitcoin monetary system had been totally and correctly dollar-ified, with billions of {dollars} in liquidity of dollar-denominated buying and selling pairs making up the lion’s share of market exercise. The identical could be mentioned for the Ethereum community, which has seen its compliance-driven perversion by non-native belongings taking the wheel from its token Ether, as stablecoin and different greenback derivatives now uphold the vast majority of financial weight of the system. Each stablecoin giants Circle, issuer of USDC, and Tether got here out in help of the merge, additional ossifying their stake within the now-nearly-70%-OFAC-compliant blockchain. [2] As of this text’s writing, over 15.5 million ether are at present staked with out energetic withdrawals within the Ethereum 2.0 beacon chain, value almost $18 billion {dollars}.[3] Happily for Bitcoin, the consensus weight of its system just isn’t manipulated by consumer stake, and thus the Bitcoin market has been seemingly unaffected – negatively anyway – by this decade-long growth. At the very least till scammer Do Kwon and his ponzi-scheme Luna wreaked havoc on buyers at the beginning of Might of 2022.
“[Crypto is] clearly severe…you wish to do proper by it within the regulatory area.”
– President Invoice Clinton, April 27, 2022 (Allegedly) [4]
Contagion Spreads
Only some weeks after SBF hosted a keynote with former U.Okay. Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Invoice Clinton on the FTX-organized Crypto Bahamas convention, one of many largest-ever over-the-counter bitcoin purchases was introduced by the LUNA workforce.
Terraform Labs and the non-profit Luna Basis Guard, two entities headed by Do Kwon, had begun a marketing campaign to buy bitcoin as a reserve asset within the occasion that their algorithmic stablecoin, UST, deviated from its $1 peg. Shortly earlier than their collapse, the plan had ballooned to the lofty aim of stacking over $10 billion within the hardest recognized digital commodity recognized to man. This buy was financed with Three Arrows Capital, or 3AC, and was facilitated by cryptocurrency dealer Genesis.
“Terra’s outstanding progress has constantly reshaped crypto markets during the last two years”, mentioned Joshua Lim, head of derivatives at Genesis. “Genesis is happy to be a liquidity associate to the Terra ecosystem, connecting it to a broader viewers of institutional market members.”
With the bitcoin reserves of Luna Basis Guard totalling 80,394 BTC, valued at over $3.1 billion on Might 5, 2022, this buy positioned LFG among the many top-10 bitcoin holders on this planet. [5] However just for a second, for whereas it would really feel like a lifetime in the past, what occurred subsequent ought to look awfully acquainted; the peg was attacked, the recently-purchased bitcoin fortune was liquidated, Binance, led by CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ), aptly halted all buying and selling on LUNA and UST pairs – with notable exceptions to their very own stablecoin BUSD – and Kwon seemingly fled to exterior of U.S. jurisdiction to Asia. [6]
Thus begins our first of many repeatable factors of inquiry; the place precisely did this bitcoin go? In keeping with an audit launched in November 2022, over 33,000 bitcoin have been transferred to Binance on Might 10, 2022, and bought together with different belongings whereas failing to defend the peg. [7] The identical day the almost $1 billion {dollars} value of bitcoin hit Binance’s order books, bitcoin’s USD value broke beneath $30,000, falling from $40,000 only a week earlier than.
On Might 13, SBF bought a 7.6% stake in Robinhood, the buying and selling platform that got here beneath scrutiny for halting buying and selling throughout the GameStop fiasco in early 2021. Bloomberg had reported that round 40% of Robinhood’s income got here straight from promoting clients orders to companies equivalent to Two Sigma Securities, and Citadel Securities. [8] Citadel had been fined $700,000 in July 2020 for entrance working trades positioned by clients orders, and in September of that very same 12 months, Robinhood itself was questioned by the U.S. Securities and Trade Fee (SEC) for improperly informing purchasers of promoting inventory trades to recognized high-frequency buying and selling companies.
Beforehand in December 2020, Robinhood had agreed to pay $65 million to settle fees of repeated misstatements for failure to reveal their receipts of funds from mentioned buying and selling companies. [9] When newly-nominated Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen briefed newly-elected President Joe Biden on this battle of curiosity in February 2021, she herself needed to purchase an ethics waiver as a result of having obtained at the least $700,000 in speaker charges from Citadel LLC the 12 months prior. [10] SBF had disclosed this buy through a filed Schedule 13-D kind with the SEC, costing $648.3 billion {dollars} and giving him 2.8% voting energy of their dual-class share construction, beneath the entity Emergent Constancy Applied sciences; a reputation mentioned to be randomly generated. [11]
“On July 13, Coinbase Trade will probably be unifying USD and USDC order books. As a part of the unification course of, USDC order books will probably be merged beneath USD order books to create a greater, extra seamless buying and selling expertise with deeper liquidity for USD and USDC.”
– Coinbase Trade Twitter, June 29, 2022 [12]
Circle, the entity behind the more and more utilized USDC stablecoin, had beforehand expanded their worldwide choices with a subsidiary operation primarily based in Bermuda with an announcement made on July 22, 2019. [13] This entity, filed beneath the Digital Belongings Enterprise Act of 2018 (“DABA”) meant that Circle was the primary main stablecoin issuer to obtain a Class F (“Full”) DABA license that lined their operation of custody, cost providers, change, buying and selling and extra monetary providers inside the digital asset realm. Circle’s different banking companions, Signet, Signature Financial institution and Silvergate Capital had made USD loans to Celsius, Voyager, Block Fi, Three Arrows Capital and Alameda Analysis. By the point this text was written, all had filed for chapter. Two of their different enterprise associates, Galaxy Digital and Genesis, have additionally reported huge losses within the FTX collapse, with rumors of additional contagion results coming. Coinbase, a publicly-traded change beneath the ticker $COIN, introduced in its Q2 2022 shareholder letter that just about one third of whole income was derived from curiosity on USD-denominated holdings, together with a big USDC place:
“Curiosity earnings was $33 million, up 211% in comparison with Q1. The rise was primarily pushed by our USDC exercise, in addition to increased rates of interest as we generate curiosity on fiat buyer custodial funds… on the finish of Q2, we had $6.2 billion in whole $USD sources. As well as, we had $428 million of crypto belongings.” [14]
When the letter was launched in late August 2022, curiosity on USDC holdings for 12 months was as much as 4.7%, whereas one-month yields have been a good 4%. By November 16, 2022, USDC yields have been right down to 0% throughout all time frames.[15]
“1) Binance converts USDC –> BUSD, and we see the change in provides. Thus begins the Second Nice Stablecoin Battle.”
– @SBF, October 23, 2022 [16]
On September 4, 2022, Binance introduced that it could be auto-converting all USDC, USDP and TUSD, three main greenback stablecoins, into its self-issued BUSD, efficient in simply 25 days. [17] This led to continued issues about Binance’s solvency with the previous few months, particularly July 2022, seeing the biggest recognized outflows of bitcoin within the change’s historical past, eclipsing even March 2020’s black swan backside.
On October 11, 216 days after Biden’s govt order with the aforementioned 210-day clause, BNY Mellon, the world’s largest custodian financial institution with over $43 trillion on the books, and coincidentally, the custodian of Circle’s reserves backing USDC, introduced the launch of its digital asset custody program. [18] Concerned with greater than 20% of the world’s investable belongings, the financial institution based by the primary secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton, was additionally listed as a associate within the FedNow pilot. [19]
Regardless of these institutional developments, a continued bear market weighed closely on the now-plummeting bitcoin value. Paradoxically, an increasing number of Bitcoin hash price poured onto the community. These concurrent actions noticed Bitcoin’s hash value plummet to an all-time low, spurring an enormous liquidation of bitcoin liabilities off mining operators books. On October 26, Core Scientific, then the biggest Bitcoin mining operation on this planet, filed for chapter with hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in debt liabilities, 1000’s of ASICs, and but of their filings, held solely 24 bitcoin whole when the circus got here to city. [20] The place precisely did all this bitcoin go? On that very same day, barely two weeks earlier than the FTX collapse, Binance noticed its largest single day outflow, with 71,579 cash, totalling over $1.1 billion in greenback phrases. [21] This pushed web outflows to almost 95,000 cash from the world’s largest change since simply that July. Once more, the place precisely did all this bitcoin go? The very subsequent day, October 27, 2022, SBF appeared on The Large Whale and introduced future plans for FTX to launch its very personal stablecoin. [22]
Extra Sand Than {Dollars}
“CIA and Mossad and pedo elite are working some type of intercourse trafficking entrapment blackmail ring out of Puerto Rico and caribbean islands. They’re going to body me with a laptop computer planted by my ex gf who was a spy. They are going to torture me to dying.”
– Nikolai Muchgian, October 28, 2022 [23]
On October 24, 2022, the MakerDAO accredited a neighborhood proposal to custody almost $1.6 billion USDC with Coinbase Prime. [24] 4 days later, Nikolai Muchigan, the co-founder of MakerDAO and inventor of Rai, a DAI-fork stablecoin, tweeted that his life was in peril as a result of a Caribbean island blackmail ring, supposedly backed by Israeli and U.S. intelligence brokers. Three days later, on Halloween, the 29-year-old coder Muchigan was discovered lifeless, having drowned within the sea off Condado Seaside in Puerto Rico. [25]
Two days later, on November 2, 2022, CoinDesk reporter Ian Allison launched findings that over a 3rd of all belongings – round $5.8 billion of $14.6 billion – on the stability sheet of SBF’s Alameda Analysis was intrinsically, and shortly to be fatally, linked to FTX’s change token FTT. A “financial institution” run commenced, and after three days of almost $6 billion in withdrawals, FTX was left with actually one single bitcoin. The place precisely did all this bitcoin go? The subsequent day in an interview with Fortune, Coinbase founder and CEO Brian Armstrong made be aware that USDC will develop into the de facto central financial institution digital foreign money within the U.S. [26]
“The policymakers within the U.S. will set the framework that must be adopted in order that the non-public market will truly create the options, and USD coin has been on a very speedy rise… the regulatory surroundings is among the largest unlocks we’re going to have when it comes to rising this business and maybe even getting the costs to return up in the proper course”
– Brian Armstrong, November 3, 2022
On November 6, CZ introduced Binance would liquidate a remaining portion of FTT it had acquired from exiting FTX’s fairness, having obtained round $2.1 billion in BUSD and FTT. Minutes after his announcement, Caroline Ellison, SBF’s associate and the CEO of Alameda Analysis, supplied to buy the tokens at $22 every, in an over-the-counter style. [27] By November 8, CZ and SBF had a cellphone name and seemingly got here to a tentative deal for acquisition, reserving the proper to again out of the deal at any time, whereas apparently additionally leaving each U.S.-based proprietary exchanges, Binance.us and FTX.us, exterior the scope of the deal.
“Issues have come full circle, and FTX.com’s first, and final, buyers are the identical: we now have come to an settlement on a strategic transaction with Binance for FTX.com (pending DD and so forth)”, SBF tweeted. [28]
Later that night, FTX formally suspended all asset withdrawals. As a part of the circumstances of the acquisition, SBF was pressured to open the FTX books and present the underside of his pockets; seeing extra sand than {dollars}, CZ backed out of the deal. Just a few necessary statements have been made within the 48 hours or in order that led as much as this sudden cataclysm, together with from the awfully-quiet U.S. Securities and Trade Fee itself.
“Liquidating our FTT is simply post-exit danger administration, studying from LUNA. We gave help earlier than, however we can’t fake to make love after divorce. We’re not towards anybody. However we can’t help individuals who foyer towards different business gamers behind their backs. Onwards.”
– CZ, November 6, 2022 [29]
On November 7, 2022, the SEC formally deemed LBRY, or Library Coin, an unregistered safety providing, setting a devastating precedent all through the prolonged cryptocurrency market. [30] In america District Courtroom for the District of New Hampshire, the memorandum and order learn, “The Securities and Trade Fee (SEC) contends that LBRY, Inc. supplied and bought unregistered securities in violation of Part 5 of the Securities Act of 1933”, the act colloquially often called The Howey Take a look at.
Attributable to LBRY reserving a pre-mine of almost 400 million LBC tokens, and the information that the corporate up to now had spent roughly half of its pre-mined LBC, the SEC decided widespread enterprise full with a scarcity of disclosure and correct submitting of its now alleged safety providing by means of required channels within the Gary Gensler-chaired SEC. The implications of this submitting despatched shockwaves throughout the pre-mined token business, together with exchanges itemizing these tokens in addition to the entities behind their issuance. Conveniently, the subsequent day was November 8, america’ midterm elections, with the stability of the senate and the home — and maybe the regulatory path of the digital asset business — as soon as once more at stake.
Trying to find FTX on FEC.gov brings up 456 particular person marketing campaign contributions from SBF, CEO Ryan Salame, and others. [31] Salame’s contributions whole over $14 million in direction of GOP candidates, whereas SBF’s “efficient altruism” contributed over $20 million in donations to DNC politicians. Having been the second main donor to the Biden marketing campaign, by the point the ultimate tallies from election evening rolled in, SBF’s bankroll had lastly caught up together with his morals, and he discovered himself almost fully bankrupt.
By November 9, the day after the elections, SBF had reportedly misplaced 94% of his web value, right down to $1 billion from greater than $15 billion, leaving him with the biggest single-day loss by an individual in keeping with the Bloomberg Billionaire Index. [32] Early within the morning of November 10, SBF took to Twitter to elucidate what occurred, writing “I am sorry. That is the most important factor. I fucked up, and will have executed higher”, earlier than making a particular be aware that “THIS IS ALL ABOUT FTX INTERNATIONAL, THE NON-US EXCHANGE. FTX US USERS ARE FINE!” [33]
Chapter 11
“The administration […] has persistently maintained that with out correct oversight, cryptocurrencies danger harming on a regular basis People…The latest information additional underscores these issues and highlights why prudent regulation of cryptocurrencies is certainly wanted.”
– White Home Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, November 10, 2022 [34]
On the eleventh day of the eleventh month, FTX and Alameda Analysis formally filed for Chapter 11 chapter safety, and SBF stepped down as CEO. As well as, 130 affiliated firms linked or related to FTX additionally commenced voluntary proceedings beneath Chapter 11. [35] The tide had gone out, and almost everybody concerned bought caught swimming bare, as a near-endless tidal wave of dollar-denominated liquidations made fast work of SBF’s Caribbean empire.
Whereas the primary trickles of a greenback CBDC might have began within the Bahamas, the monsoon of coming regulation and contagion of the Second Nice Stablecoin Battle is much from over. The greenback, having fallen 10% off 35-year DXY highs since September, appears for brand spanking new methods to innovate and additional dollarize markets throughout the globe.
On November 15, simply 4 days after the SBF tsunami crashed to shore, BNY Mellon, in addition to a dozen or so different banking establishments, introduced the beginning of a twelve-week digital greenback pilot program with the Federal Reserve Financial institution of New York. [36] On the exact same day, BlockFi introduced plans for chapter filings, solely 5 months after taking a $250 million mortgage from FTX, and Circle introduced customers would now be capable of settle funds by accepting Apple Pay. [37,38] With a big 43% low cost now displaying on the highly-regulated Grayscale Bitcoin Belief, additional neighborhood requests for proof of reserves are rising round Genesis and Grayscale, each owned by the Digital Foreign money Group, and even their custodian, Coinbase Custody. [39,40] As of this writing, these requests have to date been denied for safety causes.
Whereas showing to be driving the wave of the booming digital asset revolution, gathering celeb endorsements and political allies alike, it seems SBF was drowning in debt and capital misallocation amongst the loud, mainstream reward. Later that month, on November 30, SBF was set to look in individual at a New York Occasions occasion, sponsored by Accenture, alongside Secretary Yellen, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, TikTok CEO Shou Chew, former Vice President Michael Pence, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, Netflix co-founder and CEO Reed Hastings, New York Metropolis Mayor Eric Adams, and others; tickets for the occasion have been listed at $2,499 per attendee.[41] The interview between SBF and Andrew Ross Sorkin was streamed as marketed, albeit with each events taking pictures remotely.
Bitcoin tends to be a ballast of reality, bringing all types of ballooning fraud dashing to the floor. FTX and Alameda Analysis will take their place amongst the seemingly too-big-to-sink gamers that ended up doing simply that. They are going to actually not be the final. Nonetheless the next weeks, months, and years play out, it’s clear that SBF was however a small fish in an ocean-sized, dollarized pond. And as he shortly came upon, there may be at all times an even bigger fish.
“Sooner or later I may need extra to say a couple of specific sparring associate, so to talk. However you understand, glass homes. So for now, all I’ll say is: nicely performed; you gained.” [42]
– Sam Bankman-Fried, November 10, 2022
ENDNOTES:
[2]https://fortune.com/2022/08/09/stablecoins-circle-tether-support-ethereum-merge-proof-of-stake
[3]https://ethereumprice.org/eth-2-deposits/
[5]https://bitcoinmagazine.com/enterprise/luna-foundation-now-holds-more-bitcoin-than-tesla
[6]https://www.yahoo.com/leisure/binance-remove-trading-pairs-ftx-114338983.html
[9]https://www.sec.gov/information/press-release/2020-321
[11] https://www.axios.com/2022/05/13/what-does-sam-bankman-fried-want-with-robinhood
[12]https://twitter.com/CoinbaseExch/standing/1542270332299579396?s=20&t=3qAy3oJqtmMnLdfwk-JTJA
[13]https://www.circle.com/weblog/circle-expands-international-offerings-with-new-bermuda-operations-and-digital-assets-business-license
[14]https://s27.q4cdn.com/397450999/information/doc_financials/2022/q2/Q2-2022-Shareholder-Letter.pdf
[15]https://www.circle.com/en/usdc-yield#begin
[16]https://twitter.com/SBF_FTX/standing/1584077423280521216?s=20&t=UB_GcB9mjBRJtNS8sS4RJQ
[21]https://bitcoinke.io/2022/11/largest-bitcoin-outflow-on-binance/
[22]https://finance.yahoo.com/information/sbf-ftx-stablecoin-second-great-055956820.html
[23]https://twitter.com/delete_shitcoin/standing/1585918718088970241
[24]https://www.coinbase.com/weblog/coinbase-launches-usdc-institutional-rewards-program-with-makerdao
[25]https://www.trustnodes.com/2022/10/31/etherean-nikolai-muchgian-dead-by-drowning
[26]https://fortune.com/crypto/2022/11/03/coinbase-ceo-says-usdc-will-become-de-facto-cbdc/
[27]https://twitter.com/carolinecapital/standing/1589287457975304193
[28]https://www.binance.com/en/information/flash/7268278
[29]https://twitter.com/cz_binance/standing/1589374530413215744
[30]https://odysee.com/@lbry:3f/secvslbrysummaryjudgementruling:a
[31]https://www.fec.gov/information/receipts/individual-contributions/?contributor_employer=FTX
[32]https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/09/enterprise/sam-bankman-fried-wealth-ftx-ctrp/index.html
[33]https://twitter.com/SBF_FTX/standing/1590709166515310593
[35]https://cryptopotato.com/ftx-and-alameda-file-for-bankruptcy-sbf-resigns-as-ceo/
[36]https://markets.businessinsider.com/information/currencies/digital-dollar-wall-street-banks-new-york-fed-ftx-crash-2022-11?miRedirects=1&op=1
[38]https://www.circle.com/weblog/apple-pay-is-now-available-on-circle
[39]https://information.yahoo.com/grayscale-bitcoin-trust-hits-record-132435240.html
[40]https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-news-today-11-18-2022/card/coinbase-vouches-for-grayscale-investments-products-yA5vzaPEIvaOr7Ffj2GE
[41]https://www.nytco.com/press/the-new-york-times-to-host-annual-dealbook-summit-on-nov-30/
[42]https://twitter.com/SBF_FTX/standing/1590709197502812160
